This is why he is a great President!

President Bush had a sitdown with the Politico and his take on the the former President Carter (the idiot) is quite nice..

The money quote:

"Yes, well, what he ought to be saying is, is that America doesn't torture. If the implication there is that we do now, then he's wrong. And you bet we're going to protect ourselves by the use of military force. What he really is implying is -- or some imply -- you can be popular; if you want to be popular in the Middle East just go blame Israel for every problem. That will make you popular. Or if you want to be popular in Europe, say you're going to join the International Criminal Court.

but also the wives, children and neighbors (never crazy about Hellfire-induced plummeting property values) of the increasing number who have recently become persuaded that the 1 current wife at home was starting to look a whole lot better than the 72 pictured in the glossy brochure.

"I hate western culture.... ooo but that matrix movie was pretty sweet. Let me use a little bit of that. But I still hate the westerners and everything they do... except computers of course. Those are still neet. But I really really hate westerners...."

Da*n. I'm not sure what to say after seeing that...other than NICE JOB GC! I'm glad you made those terrorist cry in their mommas shoulder. Real men hijack websites, I'm sure Mohammed would be proud of them.

The trouble with our friend John McCain isn't that he's ignorant, but that he knows so much that isn't so.

but we are going to miss that Cowboy!
And when history shows that he was far better than what the MSM fools and dems claimed, we can blow raspberries at them together.
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Just a typical, small town, white girl...

I think he represents all that is best about this country. I love the idea that my President prays before he goes to bed. But, I love him most for making fools out of most libs. He may not have always made the best choices and at times he should have stood his ground against the left a little better, but in the end I believe he always has the last left. A few little word flubs here and there and everyone is distracted from his true intelligence, which can be good from time-to-time.
My favorite part of this interview though, was when he was playing golf and American soldiers were bombed in the middle east (I believe is how the story goes). He stopped playing immediately and told his partner he was finished until this war was over.
INTEGRITY!!!!
MelZ

I am not hoping to live long enough to see it, but I entertain in full compos mentis the possibility of having at least a grandchild someday reflect on the astonishing years when a handful of men, tarnished yes, but sturdy as oaks, stood nearly alone against not only a hostile segment of the world but their own largely faithless, narcissistic culture as well.

before anyone attempts to directly correlate the 2 adjectives with which I characterize our culture to the 2 political parties, let me add that some of us are persuaded that those characteristics are so widespread and deeply ingrained in the culture as a whole that neither political party can even exist without a majority of its members being affected to a greater or lesser degree.

What causes me no end of astonishment when reading this site is the near-constant assumption that it is not only possible to coalesce a politically conservative majority from a populace which, preferred "brand" notwithstanding, has no firm foundation on which to base political discourse, but that the responsibiliy for altering the trajectory of such a culture falls upon its Executive--think "bully pulpit" here--rather than its citizens in their own vocations.

Bottom line: under the sovereignty of God, most governments of the world--not all, but it seems to be a general pattern barring extraordinary circumstances--end up with leaders who are reflective of the cultures of which assume--in any of its many forms--federal headship. My astonishment lies in the degree to which the "conservative consensus" is willing to heap blame on a leader for not rising further above the cultural norm, yet continues to hope that the norm will somehow be raised if only the right new leader could be found.

occasionally been an outstanding President. Most of the time he has been an ok President. Sometimes he has been horrible. There are certain aspects (general communication and the use of the bully pulpit) that have been glaring weaknesses. His concept of "compassionate conservatism" has almost single-handedly destroyed the Republican majority and it could take us 10 years to recover from it.

But that being said, on security he was been wonderful. I love his candidness. He has expressed the right energy policies, but has not been able to sell it.

I think he comes across well in these interviews and wish that he would/had done far more.

to ever cross the lexicon of popular culture....it also had the ability to show the stupidity of the Democrats who consistantly called this President dumb and made fun of him...when the reality is he played them like a fine fiddle...

a fine fiddle....he had the words and records of the former administration and Democrat Senators on Iraq....and even though those lilly livered Dem's didn't want to go to war they had no choice because 1) it was a election year and America was pissed and 2) their own push for war under Clinton for the same exact reasons....and might I add for the last 6 years those idiots have put up something like 49 different bills to "end the war" and they have been pushed around and beaten by someone they call "dumb"...it takes brilliance to be thought of as dumb and yet beat your DUMB opponent...I guess you have heard that the President does not mispronounce nuclear in private...but the media wing of the Democrat party gets a kick out of making fun of him because it pushes their stories of how dumb he is....FINE FIDDLE!

I'm talking about people who won't have any interest in bashing him 100 years from now. They won't be able to deny a link between Middle East democracy (if it remains, and I think it will even grow) and George W. Bush the only leader who though the people of the Middle East were "ready" for democracy unlike so many elite liberal snobs.

The man has expanded the power of the federal government by pushing through the largest bureaucracy since the Great Society (Homeland Security), he pushed through yet another step to socialized medicine (Prescription Drug Benefit), he stood idly by and signed every bloated pork spending bill of the Congress, he pushed strongly for amnesty...

Do we want future generations of Republicans to emulate this?

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I am a Positivist Pastafarian for the alliteration alone.

For all the stupid things FDR did domestically, he fought WWII and fought it well. Same for Lincoln. I drop partisan stuff (I don't think war should be partisan) when it comes to war, and I'm totally willing to praise a liberal who fights war well.

I'll always love Bush foreign policy wise, he did his job as Commander in Chief and took his job to protect the nation more seriously than anything else. His domestic vision was an atrocity, but overall what he needed was more fangs like this, we he calls out those lying defeatist traitors for the unprinciples limp wristed pimps that they are.

about a man who passive let his policies be trashed by his enemies because he wanted to "reach out" to them, thereby destroying public support for his efforts? Ronald Reagan realized that public support is vital in a democracy in order to have your policies prevail. How would "history" tread Reagan today if he had politely allowed Tip O'Neil and Dan Rather to characterize his tax policy or his foreign policy?

Maybe, for instance, Reagan should have just silently allowed Dan Rather to cry into the camera after he refused to sacrifice SDI to Gorbechov in Iceland, instead of going around the MSM to set the record straight with the American people. Didn't he know that it was better to show "disdain" for the elites by silently allowing Dan Rather's take on the Iceland summit become established fact? Didn't he know that collapse of support for his policies, and the election of a successor hostile to his intentions, was irrelevant as long as "history" looked kindly on his intentions?

If, as expected, the GOP goes down in flames this November, due in large part to the President's political malpractice, there won't be much of a legacy for history to judge the President by. Most of the good he did will be undone, and then it really won't matter if white-haired academics in 2065 look back and say he had good ideas -- if only he had had the common sense needed to fight for them.

They judge those who won or lost wars and those who brought fortune or poverty on their people. Only white haired academics care who the first guy to think up a policy like detante is. As far as I'm concerned, for all of his "brilliance", Nixon did not win the war he was given. Nor did he do anything to bring untold fortune on his people. He will go down in history as a foot note. Reagan brought fortune to his people and won the cold war. He will be remembered kindly. George W. Bush brought freedom to a people thought unfit for freedom. History will judge him kindly (if they stay free).

Please define. If by nation building you mean liberation and allowing a people to govern themselves and not be ruthlessly slaughtered when they look crosseyed at the ruling party, then yes I agree. If not, you know where to put your opinion.

you're doing it all wrong. I think I know what you mean, but I need you to spell it out so I can say "Clean up in aisle 12". I've always wanted to say that. Now really, please tell me specifically what you don't like about Bush. And while you're at it, tell me about "that piece of trash Lincoln" or do you not go that way?

Despite what the MSM and the ankle biting so called Libertarians and their ilk say, Bush43 put everything on the line to protect America from the Islamofascists and always sought to act within the scope of his principles. How many of this or the preceding century's presidents could honestly say that?

The wannabee conservatives always wish to eat their own for vanity's sake. If they truly wished to have CONSERVATIVE CHANGE at the top of the ticket in the GOP, which is the only legitimate conservative home, then they would work to install conservative leadership at the grass roots level. Until that is accomplished there will never be another true conservative president.

The sad fact of the matter is that most conservatives are unwilling to invest the time and effort to build a conservative GOP from the ground up. Most merely vote or send in small sums to their favorite candidates and think the job is done. That is only natural, as the core being of most conservatives is consumed with producing for the free market.

However, there is a significant and vocal percentage that are not satisfied with their inability to achieve political fulfillment. Instead, they want to have the ego stroking feeling of being a noticeable fish in a very small pond by abandoning the GOP for fringe parties such as the Libertarian and Constitutional parties. They never get more than 1.5% of the vote and are rarely on the ballot in all 50 states, much less the various territories, districts, etc...

The sum total of their efforts is to take votes and influence away from conservative GOP candidates and initiatives.

So, to mitigate the fetid stink of guilt in the back of their minds they must tear down those in GOP leadership who actually have accomplished good things for Americans, often by parroting the lies of the MSM.

If those who state they are conservatives, but have left the GOP, really wished to work for conservative change they would work to change the GOP at the grass roots level instead of abandoning the party. There is gritty work to be done, but very few willing to do it.

Anyone who asks me why, with such low approval ratings, is usually someone I know to have a similar strong belief that also puts them in a minority, too. You can always ask atheists and agnostics if they're still sure of their convictions despite having relatively few peers. Makes the point.

'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.'.......
CNN is shocked, and Obama campaign is spitting nails, over this comment from President Bush,speaking at the Israeli Knesset:
"Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is - the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

The line was applauded.

Robert Gibbs, communications director of the Obama campaign, calls in to CNN to denounce Bush for "politicizing the 60th anniversary of Israel with a false political attack." He called it "cowboy diplomacy, head in the sand type diplomacy." (I'm not quite sure how it can be both.)

Hell, he threw Dubya under the bus on his global warming speech, and he's thrown the Bush administration under the bus on running the Iraq War, why wouldn't he throw us under the bus again. I think he'll take this opportunity to remind us all that he was the one calling for change in Iraq, and that he spoke out against the missteps of the war, and yeah he backed the war from the get go, but not like Bush did and everything Bush does and did is bad bad bad! Now please pretty please write that McCain's different than Bush and those other mean Republicans, because I know New York Times, you're my real friends. Yech.

The trouble with our friend John McCain isn't that he's ignorant, but that he knows so much that isn't so.